


You Are The Home I Never Expected To Find

by LaShaRa



Series: Amegakure Orphans [2]
Category: Naruto
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - High School, Fluff, Jealousy, Konan deserved better, Multi, Nagato Is Oblivious, Pre-Relationship, Yahiko Is Oblivious
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-16
Updated: 2020-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:14:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23166808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaShaRa/pseuds/LaShaRa
Summary: No one would really know Konan, if they’d all been left to their own devices. And yet here she is, sitting at lunch on a Wednesday with the loudest kids in the grade, because Yahiko is the complication that no one can deny in their lives.
Relationships: Konan & Nagato | Pain, Konan/Nagato | Pain/Yahiko, Konan/Yahiko (Naruto)
Series: Amegakure Orphans [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1823980
Comments: 8
Kudos: 8





	You Are The Home I Never Expected To Find

**Author's Note:**

> Absolute wish fulfillment, but oh well, let's not pretend we're here for anything else. Also because the world is scary and miserable right now and this is how I'm scaling it back to the things I can actually fix. Stay safe out there, y'all.

Konan looks at Yahiko and sees a home she never expected to find. 

To everyone else at the Amegakure Academy, the friendship between the two of them are the greatest improbability. Yahiko is the star of the junior class. He’s conventionally handsome, all broad shoulders and strong hands and that perfectly coiffed shock of hair. He’s talented - there’s no sport he can’t turn his hand to, be it rowing or water polo or river swimming. He’s popular - he’ll sit down in the cafeteria and instantly the noise level rises by about five hundred percent, jokes and puns and friendly ribbing filling the air for a seven-table radius. He’s _that_ Yahiko - there’s no mistaking him for anyone else. 

And then there’s Konan. She’s top of their class in everything and yet quiet enough that not a day goes by without someone asking her to speak up. Despite the electric shade of her hair, she blends into the background, flitting swiftly and unobtrusively through the rowdy crowds of the hallway, gone before anyone can look at her twice. Few people know that she’s a runner, second only to Kyusuke in speed, and that only because she refuses to train with the track team. (She is the furthest thing from a team player). That she plays the piano, but only after hours, on Friday afternoons, when all the upperclassmen have gone home to doll up for the weekend and the janitors have learned not to lock her into the music room. That she collects blank notebooks, piles them onto her bedroom windowsill like talismans, full of possibilities.

The truth is that no one would really know Konan, if they’d all been left to their own devices. And yet here she is, sitting at lunch on a Wednesday with the loudest kids in the grade, because Yahiko is the complication that no one can deny in their lives. As usual, she’d entered the cafeteria perfectly prepared to sit by herself at the back of the room, her books spread out in front of her, her headphones lodged firmly in her ears. And yet, as usual, before she’d gone five steps she’d found herself seized by a whirlwind of tanned limbs and soft-smelling fabric and deposited on a bench seat, a bowl of noodles materializing in front of her as if by magic. On her right, Yahiko shovels rice into his mouth with a vigour that implies he’s never seen food before, and gesticulates at Kyusuke with equal vigour. There is a soft laugh from her left and Konan turns to find Nagato, smiling at her from under his fringe as he wraps the ends of his sleeves around his mug. Konan smiles back. “Hey.”

“All okay?”

Konan nods, pulling her bowl towards her. A crisp, familiar scent rises from a shimmery powder on its surface - cinnamon, because Yahiko is a lunatic who believes there is nothing that cannot be improved by this single spice and carries sachets of it in his backpack next to his calculator. But this too, is part of her life now, has been since the second week of freshman year when Yahiko threw himself dramatically into the empty chair at her table, startling her into overturning her teacup across a brand new sketchbook. In what is now a legendary episode in the canon of their friendship, she’d hit him across the face and then burst into horrified tears; he’d apologized as profusely as he could while bleeding from the nose and being shoved face-first into a pile of paper towels by Nagato. They’d presented her with a ridiculously overpriced roll of artist’s canvas the next week; she’d yelled at them; and so it continued. Now, Konan is here, eating cinnamon-flavoured noodles, watching Yahiko argue and Nagato smirk with people whom she considers familiar, even friends. There is only a few inches difference between her height and the two of them, but she still likes to pull her knees up on the seat and sit a little lower in the booth, fortified and bracketed by their pointy elbows and long thighs.

“Hey, isn’t that Yua over there?”

Daibetsu’s boisterous pronouncement somehow manages to rise above and defeat the surrounding cacophony. Konan’s spine straighten of its own accord; she feels rather than sees Nagato shake his fringe even further over his eyes. On her other side, Yahiko turns towards Daibetsu, raging argument suspended in the air like his spoon. “Wait, really?”

“Yahiko! It’s been too long!”

A whirlwind of lacy sleeves and knife-sharp perfume descends upon the table; Konan ducks and finds that Nagato has already slid away along the bench, leaving a foot of space into which she gratefully escapes. Behind her, Yahiko disappears under Yua’s waist-length mane of hair, bowl clattering to the floor. Konan waits for the annoyed grumbles, because Yahiko hates wasting food, but then he _laughs_ and Konan thinks, _oh no._

“It’s so great to see you! You’ve gotten so tall, I feel intimidated! Maybe I should go away more often, if all my friends turn into movie stars when I get back!”

“But then we would miss you too much, Yua,” protests Yahiko, and he’s still smiling, one hand on Yua’s wrist as she leans against their table. “Konan, you remember Yua, right?”

Before Konan can say _of course, how could I forget the girl who broke your heart and ran off to Europe and left me to glue back the pieces,_ Yua turns. “Konan! What a surprise to see you! I mean, not really, you haven’t changed a bit, but how wonderful to see you around people for once!”

Konan opens her mouth, feeling hot words rising up the back of her throat and then there’s a hand on her clenched fists under the table. Nagato. _Not here,_ he taps out lighting fast, in the code they devised freshman year, and she knows he’s right, but it takes her longer than it has in _months_ to choke the vitriol back at the last second, to not launch herself up into Yua’s pretty, painted face. 

“I’m having a party at my house this weekend and you’re all invited!” Yua proclaims, oblivious to the thunderstorm simmering right under her powdered nose. “I’m looking forward _so much_ to celebrating with all my friends!”

 _What friends,_ Konan thinks, because people like Yua don’t have friends, they have followers, as evidenced by the cheers and nodding heads all around the table. Yua blows a kiss to Yahiko - who _chuckles,_ who is _nodding_ like every other bobblehead here - and then dashes away to the next table like it’s her wedding and everyone in the cafeteria is an unfortunate guest. Yahiko stares after her for a few seconds, then dives under the table, reemerging after some scrambling with his now empty bowl and spoon. He looks around and meets their stunned gazes. “ _Nani?_ ” he asks innocently, like _any of this_ is normal.

“I’m going to the library,” declares Konan, and then she does exactly that, clambering over Nagato’s lap until she’s out of the booth, ignoring Yahiko’s noises of confusion as she walks out of the cafeteria, keeps walking until she’s inside the library. It’s deserted at lunchtime, and no one notices her slipping inside and up multiple rickety flights of stairs to the third floor, where there is a tiny corner carved out between tall mahogany cabinets, equipped with a rug and an threadbare armchair and perfect for one person who doesn't mind the overpowering scent of old paper. It’s a place neither of the boys knows about and it is perfect for times like this, when she needs to get away from Nagato’s too-knowing eyes and Yahiko’s too-little-knowing face, when she’s confronted once again with the proof that despite everything that’s happened over the last three years, she’s never going to be what Yahiko is really looking for. 

Konan buries herself in her chair and lets herself sink, just a little, into the lilac fog that grips her at times like this, when it’s so painfully obvious that the person she considers more hers than anyone else in the world is never hers, not in the way she wants, and that they couldn’t be more different besides. Yahiko is her home, but she’s never going to be his. Eventually, she’ll have to leave this chair and this corner and this library, because she has computer science with both boys in an hour and if she’s not there they’ll be insufferable with questions. But for now she sits and wonders if lace sleeves and air-kisses would really make Yahiko smile at her with that easy, delighted happiness; if it would be worth it.


End file.
